Over half of time spent on security issues is wasted

It was department store tycoon John Wanamaker who came up with the famous line, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." A new report from Lacework suggests that IT teams may feel the same way about time spent on security.

A study 700 executives and practitioners, carried out by ClearPath Research to learn more about cloud adoption and the changing security landscape, finds that 55 percent of security and compliance teams globally believe at least half their time spent on security issues is 'not meaningful'

The security of cloud environments will become increasingly important over the next year according to 88 percent of respondents. However, 45 percent of respondents agree with the statement 'our security and compliance struggle to keep pace with our business needs.'

Part of the problem is that 32 percent are using the same rules, processes, and tools for both on-premise and cloud security. Only 22 percent use different approaches for cloud and on-prem environments.

When asked about the greatest risk their organisations face, 39 percent of respondents cited 'unknown vulnerabilities we aren't aware of' as the top concern. In terms of automation, only 36 percent of companies say they have automated 61 percent or more of their cloud security. 76 percent of respondents say 'machine learning has practical applications in cloud security' and would welcome more machine learning in their security environment.

To address the issue Lacework is launching its Polygraph Data Platform, which helps organizations of all sizes automatically uncover suspicious activity across a multicloud environment so they can detect and address true threats and risks to their business

"Companies are moving more workloads to the cloud to take advantage of the scalability and flexibility it offers. They face an ever changing and rapidly increasing set of attacks squarely targeting cloud adoption. Customers are seeking security solutions that help them manage the scale and complexity of their cloud environments and guard against threats such as ransomware and zero day vulnerabilities," says Jay Parikh, co-CEO of Lacework. "Continual end-to-end monitoring of cloud runtimes using the data-driven approach of the Polygraph Data Platform helps customers understand all of their environments and stay ahead of these threats."

You can find out more on the Lacework site.

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